Defining Sustainability

A recent article in Physics World Magazine by George Crabtree titled, "The Road to Sustainability", addresses the problem of sustainable energy production and sets out three criteria for sustainability. An energy technology must last a long time, do no harm, and leave the environment unchanged. In assessing these criteria the full life cycle of the energy process needs to be considered, including construction and disposal.

This analysis is right on target, but as the author notes, the immediacy of the problems facing us means that;

we do not have the luxury of achieving full sustainability for all of our next-generation energy technologies, we can use these definitions to select our strategic sustainability targets and track our progress toward achieving them.

The article discusses the relative merits of solar, wind, nuclear, biofuels and electric cars. For each of these, Crabtree argues, true sustainability requires significant technological advances. To achieve these, he looks to nanoscience for the answers;

Nanotubes offer versatile and promising opportunities for controlling energy conversion at the nano-scale. TiO2 nanotubes like those pictured above are inexpensive, chemically inert, photostable, provide high surface-to-volume ratio and have band gaps that support sustainable energy technologies like solar water splitting, dye-sensitized solar cells and transparent conducting electrodes. They can be prepared by a variety of electrochemical processes, doped to tune their band gaps and decorated to promote surface catalytic activity.

Crabtree has taken a "technology will save us" approach that promises much even as it relies on unknown and untested technologies. Missing from the article is any discussion of conservation, downsizing or localizing where truly significant savings can be achieved using technology that already exists.

Sustainability, then also requires an acknowledgment of the limits of growth, and that we must design our energy production and usage to fit within those limits.

Resiliant Cities

Resilient Cities: Responding to Peak oil and Climate Change by Peter Newman, Timothy Beatley and Heather Boyer is an important book for anyone interested in transitioning from unsustainable, car based, suburbs to a lower energy, transit based system.

The authors identify seven key elements of a resilient city.

1. Urban areas will be powered by renewable energy technologies from the region to the building level.
2. Every home, neighborhood, and business will be carbon neutral.
3. Cities will shift from large centralized power, water, and waste systems to small-scale and neighborhood-based systems.
4. The potential to harness renewable energy and provide food and fiber locally will become part of urban green infrastructure.
5. Cities and regions will move from linear to circular of closed-loop systems, where substantial amounts of their energy and material need are provided from waste streams.
6. Cities and regions understand renewable energy more generally as a way to build the local economy and nurture a unique special sense of place.
7. Cities, neighborhoods, and regions will be designed to use energy sparingly by offering walkable, transit-oriented options for all supplemented by electric vehicles.

New Urbanism

New Urbanism has become quite popular among city planners, especially in “environmentally conscious” areas such as Montgomery County. The New Urbanists have promoted high density “walkable” communities as an effort to reduce reliance on automobiles. High density neighborhoods are springing up around every metro stop, and even where there is no easily accessibly metro stop.

But Resilient Cities has a warning for the New Urbanists. A study of New Urbanist developments in Perth, Australia, demonstrated some of the weaknesses of a New Urbanist approach. The study compared eleven New Urbanist developments with forty-six conventional suburbs. The New Urbanist developments had a 9 percent switch from cars to walking for local trips, which also came with a 7 percent reduction in obesity.

However the New Urbanist developments showed no difference in total fuel usage for transportation. Fewer car trips for local travel were balanced out by greater use of cars for longer trips and reduced car occupancy.

The quality of transit available was a significant factor. A typical transit trip to work would have taken over 80 minutes compared with 30 minutes for a car trip. None of the New Urbanist suburbs produced the density and mix of uses in their centers to be self sufficient, leaving them reliant on quality transit services to make any difference.

An analysis of transport fuel use across Australian cities has shown several strong relationships between transit quality and fuel use. The closer the development to the city center, the higher the density, and the higher quality of the transit service, the lower the fuel consumption. Quality transit service was defined as whether an area had a better than 15 minute service.

Highways

All of the available data shows that building more highways creates more traffic while tearing up highways and creating pedestrian and bicycle friendly cities decreases traffic.

Surveys show that the higher the average speed on freeways, the more fuel per capita is used. Cities with higher congestion have lower fuel use while cities with the least congestion use the most fuel. Increasing road capacity will cause car use to increase to fill the newly available space. A study by the Texas transportation Institute of US cities over the past thirty years shows no difference in the levels of congestion between those cities that invested heavily in roads and those that did not.

There is a growing awareness among some traffic engineers of this problem. Andy Wiley-Schwartz, from Project for Public Spaces says, “Road engineers are realizing that they in the community development business and not just in the facilities development business.” This new viewpoint has crystallized in the “slow road movement.”

Some cities are ahead of the curve on this development. For the past thirty years, Copenhagen has removed two percent per year of its parking space from the streets and squares and created pedestrian areas. Each year car use has declined while cycling and pedestrian use has increased.

In the US, the Complete Streets movement is attempting to create a similar shift, creating new public spaces in every community. The Project for Public Spaces has also sponsored many similar projects.

Examining what shape cities take in the future is vitally important to our ability to adapt to a lower energy economy.

Water Wars in the US Southeast

The semi arid US Southwest has been accustomed to bitter conflicts over water rights, but now years of drought combined with rapid growth have sparked a fight between Georgia, Alabama and Florida over the rights to the use of water from the federal reservoir at Lake Sidney Lanier.

In July, a federal judge ruled that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers erred by putting drinking water for Atlanta before Lake Lanier's mandated purposes: hydroelectric power, navigation and flood control.

The judge gave Congress until 2012 to work out a water-sharing deal among Georgia, Alabama and Florida or most of metro Atlanta will have to scale back water withdrawals to 1970s levels.

Although the severe drought conditions that plagued the Southeast in recent years have lifted, Atlanta's rapid growth continues to strain the demand for water. Atlanta grew by roughly 890,000 between 2000 to 2006, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the fastest growth of any metro area in the U.S.

Some in Atlanta believe that the court case was a result of envy of Atlanta's growth. Charles Krautler, the director of the Atlanta Regional Commission, complained that, “The only motivation is political. We don’t have as good of spin doctors as they do. It’s easy to point the finger at big bad Atlanta.”

But Alabama Governor, Bob Riley replied that, “Atlanta has based its growth on the idea that it could take whatever water it wanted, whenever it wanted it, and that the downstream states would simply have to make do with less.”

Congress must now approve Atlanta's use of the Lake Lanier water for drinking water in the next three years, which may be a difficult task given that the Florida and Alabama delegations to Congress outnumber Georgia's

Water wars may continue to spread to other parts of the country. In his 2006 book, The Great Lakes Water Wars, Peter Annin looks at the past and present conflicts over the largest collection of fresh surface water on earth which may also become a battlefield for water for parts of the country straining the limits of their local supplies.

Our aging electric grid

Electric power generation is biggest source of lost energy in absolute terms. Only 31% of the energy used to generate electricity ends up as distributed energy. When line losses, transfer stations, and the inefficiencies of the appliances and factories that use electricity are added, useable energy can drop as low as 2 percent.

Electricity represents a growing portion of total energy use. It is expected that electricity will constitute 16 percent of the total energy consumption in 2009 as compared to 9 percent about 20 years ago. While transportation accounts for 20% of our total greenhouse gas emissions, the electrical system accounts for 40%. But our transmission system is badly out of date; its infrastructure will need a huge investment to meet the expected future demand. According to The Brattle Group, a $1.5 trillion investment will be required between 2010 and 2030 to pay for new infrastructure.

The Department of Energy estimates that demand for electricity has increased by around 25 percent since 1990 while construction of transmission facilities dropped 30 percent. The resulting congestion has raised line losses, which have increased from a low as 5 percent of electricity transmitted in 1970 to 9.5 percent by 2001. This represents roughly and additional 3 quadrillion Btus lost to inefficiency.

Our aging electric infrastructure is one major reason why plans for a smart grid have been getting a lot of attention as the most efficient alternative to this problem. A smart grid would require less new capacity by saving more energy.

Smart grid technologies would transform the grid from a centralized, producer controlled network to a less-centralized, more consumer interactive network. Adding digital sensors and remote controls to the transmission and distribution system would improve efficient transmission of electricity. It would be able to cope with new sources of renewable power, allow for coordinated charging of electric cars, provide information to consumers about their usage and allow utilities to monitor and control their networks more effectively.

An important part of the smart grid would be smart meters that would give consumers real time price and usage information and allow them to make better decisions about when they use appliances. Studies have found that people using smart meters reduce their usage by about 7%. With added incentives people curtail their usage during peak demand by 15% or more. Eventually smart meters could automatically start appliances when demand and price are the lowest.

The Department of Energy claims that, while some of the technologies required for a smart grid can be deployed in the near future, a true smart grid is generally considered to be a decade or more away. Still, a few areas have gone ahead with a transition to a smart grid. A DOE demonstration project on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula set up a system that responded to simple instructions set in place by consumers in their preference profiles. Energy was managed on the consumers’ behalf to save money and reduce the impact on the grid. Consumers saved around 10% on their bills while peak load was reduced by 15%.

The European Union has an even more aggressive smart grid agenda, a major component of which includes having buildings function as power plants. However the EU has an advantage that it does not have as large and antiquated a legacy system as the US and therefore upgrading the grid has been easier.

In some cases the most efficient use of energy comes from going off the grid entirely. The USA Today reported that there were around 180,000 families living off-grid, a figure that had grown at a 33% a year rate for a decade. In 2002, Woking Borough Council in England adopted a new Climate Change Strategy that involved replacing the national grid with a local one using combined heat and power, fuel cells, renewable energy, and private wire systems. By 2009, the Council had delivered over 20 different Combined Heat and Power and photovoltaic projects, and was offering the service to private citizens of the Borough. In 2006, CO2 emissions had been reduced by 81% in the Council's property, with a 21% reduction in CO2 emissions achieved Borough-wide. Electricity consumption was down nearly 50% in areas covered by the local grid.


Microgrids are a halfway measure between being total reliance on the grid, and going completely off grid. Micro-grids are self sufficient grids that remain hooked into the larger national grid. Micro-grids can be run using whatever fuels are available and dependable in a local area. If the micro-grids produce more power than they need, they could sell it to the national grid at a profit. They would also be suitable to adopt renewable energy sources because the investment and conversion time would be smaller. Micro-grid networks would be modular, so if one failed others would stay in service, reducing the chance for region-wide outages. If the regional grid failed, each micro-grid could continue to function. Micro-grids would also be well suited to the use of cogeneration systems, adding to their efficiency.

Energy Conservation

Reducing our use of fossil fuels is an urgent necessity. With ever more dire predictions for global warming over the coming century, reducing our consumption of fossil fuels is a necessity for the preservation of our society. Global warming will put increasing stress on our fresh water supplies, and food production, while threatening ever more severe storms. On the supply side, oil industry experts warn us that we are at or near the peak potential for world wide oil production and are headed for a period of irreversible decline in production. Similarly, estimates of U.S. coal reserves have seen a significant downward revision in recent years, while the energy content of the coal we mine declines as high quality anthracite, bituminous, and sub-bituminous coal reserves become depleted and we become increasingly reliant on low quality lignite reserves.

These two factors highlight how unsustainable our economy has become. We face major changes in the way we produce and consume energy—that much is unavoidable. Renewable energy will be an important part of a conversion to a more sustainable economy. But, perhaps even more important will be conservation.

The Energy Information Agency provides a bi-yearly review of the amount of energy consumed in the U.S. According to the most recent report, the U.S. consumed just under 100 quadrillion Btu’s of energy in 2008. Of this, 6.8% came from renewable sources or biofuels. Nuclear power accounted for 8.2%, and fossil fuels accounted for the remaining 85%.

The EIA projects that renewable energy sources will be the fastest growing energy sector, but that it will not grow enough to replace any existing fossil fuel sources. By 2020, renewables are projected to grow from 6.84 quads to 9.26 quads, nuclear power is projected to grow from 8.21 quads to 8.99 quads, while fossil fuels are projected to grow from 84.73 quads to 87.19 quads. While renewables show the biggest percentage growth, fossil fuels are still projected to grow by a slightly larger absolute amount. Additionally, the EIA projects that CO2 emissions will grow from 5814 million metric tons in 2009 to 5985 million metric tons in 2020.

The Obama administration has called for a 17% reduction in CO2 emission by 2020—a rather modest goal—but this would mean that, rather than the 2.46 quad increase in fossil fuel energy by 2020, that we would have to reduce fossil fuel use by 14.4 quads. Even this modest target is an enormous challenge, representing a more energy production than the EIA projects for all renewables in 2020. This goal can only be reached by increasing efforts to bring renewable energy online and by simultaneously pursuing conservation at every level possible.

Pollution in a crowded, toxic world

Early gains in curbing pollution made after passage of legislation such as the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act are being challenged by an ever expanding use of toxic chemicals in all phases of our economy. Ever growing economies, expanding populations, and the waste generated by them are posing more and more health risks.

Recently a Center for Disease Control study found perchlorate, a chemical in rocket fuel, at potentially dangerous levels in powdered infant formula. At too high a level, perchlorate can damage the thyroid and hinder brain development in infants. The problem is magnified by the existence of perchlorate in many of the water systems in the country. Although there is debate over what constitutes a dangerous level of perchlorate, the CDC study estimated that 54% of infants drinking perchlorate contaminated formula would exceed EPA limits with water containing 4 parts per million or more—a level found in at least 26 states.

Another recent study found a group of chemicals used in coatings on food wrappers in human blood. Food wrapper coatings break down inside the human body into a chemical known as C8 which is linked to a variety of adverse health effects.

Another product recently found to be dangerously polluted is drywall imported from China. Studies have found that samples of some Chinese drywall contained sulfur compounds which gave a sulfurous odor when exposed to extreme heat and moisture, creating a corrosive environment in the home. Owners complained of headaches and respiratory problems while copper wiring became corroded. Although most of the drywall went to Florida, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is investigating complaints in , Alabama, Louisiana, Washington and North Carolina as well. Class-action lawsuits are lining up against Chinese manufacturers as well as suppliers and builders.

A significant source of pollution that has gone virtually unrecognized are the 90,000 cargo ships that ship exports around the world. The biggest of these ships have engines which weigh 2,300 tons and use a low grade fuel oil that has up to 20,000 times the sulphur content of diesel fuel used in automobiles. One giant container ship can emit the same amount of cancer and asthma causing chemicals as 50 million cars. The ships account for around 4% of the greenhouse gasses emitted in the world.

The US government only recently set up a 230 mile buffer zone along the entire US coast after research showed that pollution from the cargo ships leads to 60,000 deaths a year in the US alone, driving up health care costs by some $330 billion. The buffer zone will impose air quality standards that will require cutting sulphur in fuel by 98%, partulate matter by 85% and nitrogen oxide emissions by 80%. The UN’s International Maritime Organization and the EU are under pressure to follow suit.

Even efforts to recycle waste material have resulted in toxic effects from chemicals in the waste. In recent years, treated sewage sludge has been used as fertilizer on farms. As early as 2002 studies were showing that exposure to this sludge resulted in burning eyes and lungs, skin rashes and other symptoms. This year a lawsuit in Missouri alleges that sludge from a St. Joseph tannery containing hexavalent chromium, had been used as fertilizer in four counties, causing brain tumors in at least two patients. In Canada, some communities and environmental groups are fighting Ontario’s plan to allow sewage sludge to be spread on farmers’ fields without a waste-disposal permit.

The problems of waste disposal and pollution continue to grow as the amount of waste grows. Industrial chemicals are making their way into our bodies in ever greater amounts. People are very literally choking on the waste created by human society. As the world grows ever smaller, these problems can only continue to multiply.

The Great Transition

The present economic crisis is widely acknowledged to be the worst since the Great Depression. Some have taken to calling the current downturn the Great Recession. But today’s crisis has important differences, including growing resource pressures, particularly with energy sources, as well as the effects of climate changes brought on by global warming. Unlike previous recessions, this downturn will require fundamental changes—a Great Transition to a more sustainable society.

Today’s recession and the Great Depression share some characteristics: a precipitous decline in the stock market, major bank failures caused by wave of deregulation, and a deflationary market (at least in housing) that worsened the position of debtors. Although today’s crisis has not yet reached the magnitude of the 1930s, millions of people have lost their jobs, millions have fallen into poverty, tent cities have appeared, reminiscent of the Hoovervilles of the 1930s.

Economists and politicians, like generals who prepare for the last war, have been determined not to make the same mistakes that were made 8 decades ago, and are flooding the market with liquidity while spending billions to create new jobs to bolster consumer demand.

Yet there are unique problems today not present in either the Depression, or any of the recessions since. Growing resource pressure played no small part in causing the present downturn. Worldwide production of oil has been flat for four years and is expected to soon roll over into permanent decline. Economist James Hamilton examined last year’s downturn and concluded that nearly all of it could be explained by the oil price shock. The housing boom saw home buyers moving ever farther out into the suburbs to buy cheaper homes. Then high energy prices helped burst the bubble by making these long commute suburbs unaffordable.

Food stockpiles have declined over the past decade causing prices to rise. Growing demand for bio-fuels aggravated the situation by taking acreage away from food production. While rising prices in the U.S. added to recessionary pressures, third world countries faced both price spikes and shortages of food and fuel, throwing people into poverty and sparking riots.

None of these problems will be solved by the economic policies of the 1930s. Energy and food prices have fallen due to the recession, but the underlying problems have not gone away. Long term solutions will require a major move away from fossil fuels; it will be a tremendous task. Our suburban/exurban way of life, with its ever bigger houses and ever more powerful cars, is inextricably bound up with oil. Our agribusinesses rely on fossil fuels for everything from fertilizer and pesticides to gas powered tractors and irrigation pumps. The typical food item is shipped some 1,500 miles or more before it is sold.

Although it would have been better if we had faced these problems before they brought the economy down, the recession has seen hints of a transition to a lower carbon lifestyle. Oil consumption has declined for the first time since the oil shocks of the 1970s. The total number of cars registered in the US is predicted to decline in 2009, the first time since World War II. Less driving and a slower economy have resulted in the first significant reduction in the amount of greenhouse gases emitted.

Another World War II phenomenon, the victory garden, is making a comeback, a small move toward more self sufficiency as well as lower energy use. The number of backyard farmers is increasing at a double digit rate; some seed companies are having difficulty keeping up with demand. Even those icons of suburbia, the McMansion and the big box store, are getting a makeover. Abandoned big box stores are no longer automatically torn down to make way for new development, but are being transformed into charter schools, health centers, a chapel, a library, even a spam museum. At least one developer of McMansions has subdivided the homes into “quartets;” four family homes offering the affordability of a condominium along with a smaller carbon footprint.

Thus far the transition to a lower energy/lower carbon future has been haphazard, in response to higher energy prices and the economic downturn. The cost to those who have been laid off or whose savings has disappeared has been tremendous. The challenge for Greens is to make this incipient transition permanent, and to create a new green economy to replace the old. Instead of bailing out the auto industry, we must transform it for the low carbon future. Instead of saving failed banks so that they can return to business as usual, we must reorient them away from speculative derivative trading toward funding smaller scale, sustainable, local businesses. Green jobs and a zero waste economy must replace our planned

Building a Sustainable Car Culture--Perils and Pitfalls

Cars and light trucks now account for about 20 percent of US greenhouse gas emissions, and more than 40 percent of US oil consumption. This level of pollution comes not only from driving them, but from their construction—including the mining and manufacture of the metals involved which create similar levels of pollution as are created during the the lifetime of their use.

Building hybrid and battery powered cars will not completely solve the problem. There are some 250,000,000 cars in the United States. Replacing even a small portion of them would do very little to reduce the CO2 emissions from the industry. Furthermore, the present generation of hybrid cars are powered by nickel metal hydride batteries. Nickel is particularly energy intensive to mine and refine, adding to the carbon footprint of the hybrid car.

Today’s car culture is inherently inefficient. As a matter of safety, a car’s wheels must hug the road; but this causes a high level of friction that the engine must overcome (this is the reason that trains are more efficient than cars and trucks.) The second problem is the weight of the car. The average car or light truck is around two tons. Even the basic Prius is 2765 pounds—a great deal of weight to carry around one or two people. Cars sold in the U.S. have been getting steadily heavier and more powerful, resulting in lower fuel efficiency. The original Honda Civics build in the 1970s got 40 mpg with a gas engine. Hybrid cars hardly get better mileage today.

Former oil industry analyst, Jan Lunberg, has concluded that we need to “get rid of car dependency.” The present economic downturn has raised questions about whether the auto industry can continue. The $13.4 billion bridge loan given by the federal government to the auto industry in December was to give the industry time to restructure, but the details of that restructuring were not known, although the Obama administration has talked about a “new, hybrid economy.”

More fundamental changes are needed if we are to meet CO2 reduction goals and to reduce our dependency on oil. We will need smaller, less powerful cars, as well as living patterns that bring us closer to work and to shopping. These goals are not receiving serious discussion yet. In all probability they will require further price increases or even shortages before they become politically viable.

Recycling Reconsidered

Recycling has become a almost unchallenged virtue of the environmental movement. Millions of people sort out their paper, plastics and metals for pickup at their curbside. Countries such as Austria, the Netherlands, and Germany recycle over half of their rubbish. However, recently some reservations have been expressed whether recycling always results in a net benefit.

China is a huge part of the market recycled paper and plastics. Shipping tons of refuse thousands of miles to China to be recycled might produce more CO2 than shipping them to a landfill. The recent economic downturn has lessened China's demand for recycled materials causing some of it to pile up on the docks.

Recently, some have argued that oil based materials such as plastics are more efficiently disposed of by incineration.

Some efforts are being made to process more recycled material locally, saving money and energy. Britain is building three new plastics reprocessing plants that will be able to handle most of the 180,000 tons of recycled plastic bottles recycled each year. An anaerobic digester will soon digest 80,000 tons a year of discarded food from the supermarkets in Sainsbury, England. The process generates a mixture of carbon dioxide and methane that is burnt for heat and power. The new process will save several million pounds a year in disposal costs.

The process of recycling is somewhat more complicated than first thought. Maximizing the benefits of recycling requires planning for how the materials will be used, and ultimately even planning when products are constructed to lessen the time and energy necessary to separate materials when the product is recycled.

The New Land Rush

Last year's food crisis that saw record food prices and food riots around the world has touched off a rush by wealthy but food reliant nations to purchase farming land in poorer countries in South and Central Asia, Latin America, and East Africa. Countries such as China, Japan, South Korea and India have been buying up fertile farm land in order to secure their own food supplies.

China's serious water problems and creeping deserts led it to lease lands in Laos, Kazakhstan, Tanzania and Brazil. With $1.8 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, China has had ample funds to buy up land. Similar water problems in India led it to lease land in Burma which already supplies a quarter of its lentil imports. South Korea has secured farmland in Indonesia and Madagascar. South Korea is continuing to negotiate with Madagascar for a deal which would encompass half of Madagascar's arable land. Saudi Arabia has given up its efforts to feed itself and has plans to buy 400,000 hectares of land by early 2009 in Australia, Croatia, Egypt, Eritrea, India, Morocco, Pakistan, Philippines, Sudan, Syria, Thailand, Ukraine and Vietnam.

The new land rush has sparked controversy in some of the selling countries. Calling the new land deals "neo-colonialism," the UN's top food expert Jaques Diouf has remarked that "Some negotiations [between host countries and the investors] have led to unequal international relations and short-term mercantilist agriculture." In Brazil, the government has become concerned that foreign groups' ownership of land was a "threat to sovereignty."


The possibility of resource wars has concerned many people who foresee growing shortages in coming years, but this new food colonialism has shown that there may be many ways that countries scramble to compete for scarce resources.